Inside a civil disobedience training session (VIDEO)

In today’s Chronicle, we have a story about climate change activists training to engage in civil disobedience over the Keystone XL pipeline. They’re ready to roll on different protest campaigns with innocuous names like “Summer Heat” and “Fearless Summer,” but the message is clear:

Oh, it’s on.

Enviros are frustrated with the lack of political progress on halting climate change, and their anger is focused on the looming Keystone decision. A growing number of people — and not just the professional activist community — want to do something more than contact their member of Congress (who obviously aren’t listening) or post a quick rant on Facebook. That just ain’t enough, many tell me.

So let’s go to the barricades.

Naturally, this being the Bay Area, the trainings are ramping up here first. We checked out a training the other day in Richmond. Lot of role-playing. Lots. Down to some role-playing security officers wielding rolled-up foam “batons.”

Here’s the crew role-playing how they would blockade the entrance to a building. Let’s go to the video, courtesy of SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle’s Shaky Hand Productions:

In the next video is David Solnit — a longtime Bay Area activist who has demonstrated around the world — explaining the do’s and don’t’s of getting arrested.

Here’s a handy tip: Don’t ever touch a police officer, police dog or police horse in any way, instructors warned. One activist at the training hushed the crowd with a story about a fellow protester who pet a police horse during a demonstration. The protester, who was a horse lover, was charged with assaulting an officer.

Again, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hand Productions, is a peek at the training: